


Tooky

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Feels, Gen, Jyn is a cat person, Small Acts of Kindness, and also cannot stand bullies, another thing Jyn cannot resist is the chance to nick some goodies, character exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2019-01-01 00:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12144582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Cassian watched the two of them for a moment.  Jyn, composed as ever, back from her impromptu breaking-and-entering side-mission; and the cat, as cool as she was.A smile he couldn’t help quirked his mouth sideways.





	Tooky

**Author's Note:**

> Since it's now canon that Jyn likes cats...

Niep Gevver was bored.  Bored to distraction.  Kriffing job, kriffing shift, kriffing duty, kriffing planet.  Why he couldn’t get an interesting assignment, when the galaxy was full of places where rebel scum were causing full-on havoc and needed a firm putting-down, places where a man could do something useful for the Empire, make a name for himself, _be_ somebody; but no, someone had it in for Private Gevver and he’d ended up here, stuck in a dumb admin job, checking kriffing shipping manifests and collecting import/export duties and exit-gate tolls.  Anyone could do this.  Any dumb civvie, hells, any _droid_ could do this.  Gevver had been expecting so much when he joined-up; he was a man, he’d got his health certs, been vice-captain of the wrestling team at high school; all the smaller kids, all the immigrants and non-humans, had known they needed to respect him.  He’d been entitled to so much more than this dumb dump of a planet and this dumb dump-shavit job.

And on a day like this it was the worst job ever.  Port Neh’wei was never the busiest on Garel but at the moment, with planet-wide travel restrictions and a dusk-to-dawn curfew in place while the boys in white rooted out the local rebs, half the time it was dead; like, Dead-dead; Dead street, Deadzone, Deadville kind of dead.  They should’ve renamed it Port Nowhere.

It was raining in kriffing Port Nowhere.  Again.

He should have been with the ‘troopers; he’d’ve been an officer by now, any fool with half an eye could have spotted his potential if he’d been accepted for front-line service.   Kriffing recruiters and their kriffing tests.  They couldn’t see a man if he stood in front of them and swung a rock. 

Hehe, that would wipe the smile off their dumb faces, if someone swung a rock at them. 

Stuck in kriffing Deadville.  Neh’wei Port, Nowhere-land, Nowhere-world.  **_Fuck!_**

_\- Mmreow?_

And that stupid whining animal was back.

Gevver picked up a stylus and shafted it at the scrawny tooka-cat peering out from under a parked skimmer truck.  It skittered back out of sight again with another aggrieved meow; and now he’d have to get up and go outside, to pick up the kriffing pen.  He’d get mud on his boots again, just when he’d gotten them good and clean and polished up proper, the way boots ought to be.

He hated cats.  This one cat in particular, because it was there and it had no right to be, and no-one but him was interested in getting rid of it.  Filthy thing, spreading its air-lice and scratching up doors, spraying its smelly piss in corners, scrounging off dock-workers too dumb to see what a pest it was.

When he’d tried to tell the Lieutenant about the tooka-cat and the various code violations and hygiene risks it presented, she’d laughed at him and called him a jobsworth.  That’s what happens when you put women in charge of capable men; they keep them down, because they enjoy it, and they make a mock of sensible rules, just because rules are something a man is more likely to care about.  The rules against animals on base were there for a reason.  Kriffing Lt Ania.  He’d spent more than one evening after hours contemplating all the things he’d like to do to her.  How much he’d like to make her squeal, in her stuck-up Core-world voice; how much he’d like to make her cry.  Kill the kriffing cat in front of her, that would be funny. 

The cat peeked out again.  Gevver opened the door, stepped outside into the drizzle.  He contemplated chasing it off, yet again; instead, for a laugh, he clicked his tongue, waggled his fingers.  “Here, kitty, kitty!”  He knew how to put on the syrupy tone people used when they talked to animals.  “Here, cutie-poots, you mangy little scavenger!  Come to papa…”  He bent down, retrieved a good-sized pebble from the ground.  “Come and see the nice stone I’ve got for you, kitty…”

It was listening, with its ugly head on one side; and he suppressed a laugh of satisfaction as it began to worm its way forward and crept out from under the truck.  Opened its great gob to meow again; and leaped out of the way with a yowl as his stone hit it squarely on one skinny flank.

Gevver chuckled.  If the animal was too hungry or too stupid to resist him luring it like that when he’d already been throwing things at it all week, then he’d be able to have some fun at its expense.  He glanced along the muddy pathway outside his toll-booth and bent to gather up half a dozen more pebbles.  Hehehe, stupid dumb cat.  Eat dirt, ugly-mug.

He moved slowly forward, away from the booth; crouched down to look under the truck-bed.  There it was, hiding on the far side.  Gevver grinned.  “Here, kitty, here, shavit-face, look what I’ve got for you.  Come to papa –“

There was a sharp crack! behind him and he turned, just in time to see something drop from the duraglass window of his booth.  A neat star-pattern of crazing splintered out from where a large stone had struck.  There was a split second of silence before the entire sheet of glass shattered. 

Gevver gaped.  A string of curses came up in his mind and his open mouth, tangling round him, too many and too furious for him to think straight; and as he began to stand up something struck the back of his skull and knocked him flying. 

A mouthful of dirt, and blood running from his nose where he’d smashed it, and there were sharp stinging cuts from where he’d face-planted in the broken glass.  His ears were ringing and the back of his head hurt like a bitch.  What the **_fuck?_**  

He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, choking on a hurricane of curses and rage.  His neat grey uniform, all blood spots and mud-stains.  His boots, muddied right to the tops.  He looked round, and saw nothing; and the second rock hit the side of his skull and felled him back into the dirt, unconscious.

A pair of worn boots strode past him and stepped into the unobserved toll-booth.  There was a rattle as the blind was dropped, and then a series of muffled sounds, of cash-drawers being emptied and lockers checked.  The owner of the boots came back, with a neat cloth bag over one shoulder and a light tread; paused to wipe mud from each foot in turn onto the back of Gevver’s uniform jacket.

“Creep,” said the owner of the boots in a conversational tone. 

She went over to the skimmer-truck and squatted down beside it.  In one hand she had a tin ration box; she was prising it open as she scanned the shadows.  She poked among the contents and pulled out a pink cube.  “Hey, puss, want some of the creep’s lunch?  Yummy protein, mmm!  It’s the good stuff, too; I’ll probably eat it if you don’t want it.  Puss-puss?  Tooky-tooky-tooky?”

Private Niep Gevver lay oblivious while the woman coaxed the tooka-cat out of hiding and fed it with the prime of his rations, and scooped it up, and cuddled it.  By the time he came-to, frozen stiff and still bleeding, the sound of her footsteps, the entirety of his credit-float and takings for the shift, his scan-docs and log-book and code-chips, and his lunch, and the furiously purring cat, were all long gone.

**

Cassian’s face when she undid her jacket was worth a good half of the money she’d swiped from that Imp.  The tooka-cat uncurled slowly from where it had lain warm against her ribs, unfolded its ears and shook them at him.  He stared and started to grin, and hid the grin under his spy-face.  If she hadn’t known him so well, she might have worried.

She unfastened the last clasp on the coat and lowered the animal to the deck.

“Tooka-cat,” she said by way of explanation.

“I can see that.”  He sighed, the smile completely hidden now.  “How?”

“Guy whose codes I needed to get was throwing stones at it.  Waited till he was clear of the booth and then slugged him one.  I got what we needed and swept the place clear so it would look like a theft; but I wasn’t leaving Tooky here to put up with that meat-head’s bullying if I could help it.” Jyn crouched down and settled on the deck, making herself comfortable beside the cat.  She swung the bag off her shoulder and began pulling things out.  “Here –“ handing him a data-pad – “current departure codes to get us off-planet tonight.  Coincidentally also got details of every Imperial vessel that’s been in or out of Garel in the last week.”

“That’s great.  I’ll get these programmed in.” 

“The rest of the haul is good, too.”  Jyn went on unpacking, and he stayed, watching her.  That smile still hidden under his best neutral look.  “Just over five hundred,” she told him. “In credit chips and scrip.  Meat-head’s scan-docs, shiny new ones, all ready for slicing.  Some other folks’ docs that the piece of shit must have confiscated.  Rations - including lots of snacks _and_ chocolate – and a nice new ration tin to put them in.  A rain poncho.  A waterproof bag for it.  And a box of pens.  I keep losing yours, so these are to make up for it.”

“And a cat.”

“Come on, we need pest-control at Echo Base.”

That got her a flicker.  Finally.  “We’re taking it back with us?”

“Cats eat snow-beetles.  And if we ever get nuna there, you’ll thank me.”  She stroked the cat, which had begun to wash its long violet-blue tail carefully.  “Won’t he, Tooky?”

**

Cassian watched the two of them for a moment.  Jyn, composed as ever, back from her impromptu breaking-and-entering side-mission; and the cat, as cool as she was. 

A smile he couldn’t help quirked his mouth sideways.

“Okay.  Well.  I appreciate the pens, anyway.  Let’s get going.  The curfew kicks in at dusk.”

“Wait,” Jyn said, her voice suddenly doubtful.  “Is that it?  You aren’t going to make a fuss about Tooky?”

“I like cats.  I’m not allergic.  And you’re right about pest control.  Why would I make a fuss?”

She smiled slowly.  “And there was I, all braced up for a heated discussion.”

“Jyn, I’m not going to start arguing with you over your choices.  You’re an adult, you make decisions, sometimes they don’t make sense to me but so long as they don’t endanger the mission or your personal safety I’m good with that.”

“Thank you.”

The tooka-cat had finished grooming and was looking around its new quarters with interest.  It reminded him very much of her.  Large bright eyes taking in every detail.   Soft fur, quiet voice; a creature so small and pretty, most people would disregard it as harmless.  Most people who had never seen it fight.  Yes, it was no surprise to learn Jyn was a cat-person.

“The downside of this, of course,” he told her in his most crisp commanding officer voice “is that if your decisions ever _do_ endanger you or the mission - I am coming after you till I find you, and I am not letting you go.  Even if I have to bring you back wrapped in my coat like a cat.  I mean it.  Don’t think I won’t do it if I have to.”

She’d actually looked defensive for a moment.  He could see the change in her expression, the instant she realised he was teasing her.  “I look forward to it, _Captain_.  Especially the bit about being wrapped in your coat.  On Hoth that would be very welcome.”

He thought about trying to get the upper hand again, tease her some more, get her to fluster.  Discarded the thought.  Wished he was wrapping her in his coat, and his arms, right now.  But he needed to get the ship airborne, and use those departure codes before they expired.

“Anytime,” he said.  “Remember to buckle your cat in before you come up top.  And I hope you’re going to share the chocolate with me?”

He could hear Jyn laughing as he climbed back to the flight deck.


End file.
